Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent

The chairman of a Senate committee has accused the Abbott government of "rigging" its Commission of Audit to justify "cruel cuts."

Speaking about an interim report released by the committee on Wednesday, Greens Senator Richard di Natale said the Coalition was using the Commission as cover to justify the spending cuts it wanted to make.

"The Abbott government has constructed very narrow terms of reference for the commission and hand-picked ideological allies as commissioners so that it gets precisely the outcome it wants," Senator di Natale said.

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"Tony Abbott has picked the players and written the rules so that the game was rigged before it even began."

Among 10 recommendations by the Labor and Green-dominated committee are calls for the Commission to publish the submissions it has received, a list of the meetings it has been involved in, and the full declarations of conflicts of interest signed by the commissioners.

The Commission is led by Business Council of Australia president Tony Shepherd and includes Liberal Senator Amanda Vanstone and former bureaucrats Peter Boxall, Tony Cole and Robert Fisher. The committee recommends additional commissioners be appointed from a broader range of backgrounds, such as health and welfare groups.

Among other recommendations, the committee says the Commission should have more time to complete its work. The Commission was announced in October, and delivered an interim report to the government on Friday. It is due to deliver a second report by the end of March. The committee recommends the Commission's remit be broadened to include the consideration of government revenue, as well as spending on tax concessions. It says any proposals to privatise services should be subject to a cost-benefit analysis.

In a dissenting report, the three Liberal members of the committee said the Coalition government had a mandate to "bring the budget under control and end Labor's reckless spending."

The Liberal Senators said this work was "a matter of urgency" and was being disrupted by the committee's demands that Commissioners appear before it.

"This report represents 900 pages of wrong priorities and nasty cuts we weren't told about before the election," Labor's finance spokesman Tony Burke said in a statement.

The Commission has been asked to make recommendations to achieve savings sufficient to deliver a surplus of 1 per cent of GDP by 2023-24. Its recommendations will be used to form Mr Hockey's first budget in May.